Taking .Astronomy into New Fields

Since 2008 I have been running .Astronomy, which is a meeting/hackathon/unconference that aims to be better than normal meetings and to foster new ideas and collaborations. It’s a playground for astro geeks that is more specific than a general hack day, but way more freeform that a normal astronomy meeting. At .Astronomy we have developed into an amazing community.

I know people that have gotten jobs because of .Astronomy, changed careers because of .Astronomy – or even left astronomy because of .Astronomy (in a good way!). We have evolved into an interesting group, with a culture and way of thinking that we take back to our ‘real’ jobs after each event.

In short: it works. Now I’d like to work out how to spread the idea into more academic fields. We’re looking for people in other research areas, such as economics, maths, chemistry, medicine and more.

I have funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to bring a handful of non-astronomers to this year’s .Astronomy, in Chicago at the amazing Adler Planetarium (December 8-10). The aim is to meet up at the end, and discuss whether you think it could work in your own field, and what you’d need to make that happen. If you’re a researcher, who isn’t an astronomer, and you think this sounds great then that could be you! We have funding to pay for flights, hotels and expenses. It will be a lot of fun – and despite the astronomy focus of the event, I think most researchers, with a bit of tech experience, would get a lot out of it.

If you’re interested then fill out the short form at http://bit.ly/dotastromulti or email me on rob@dotastronomy.com for more information. We are following a formal selection process, but we’re doing it very quickly and will decide by Nov 7th, to allow enough time ahead of the event to make travel plans and such. So don’t delay – do it now!

I'm Robert Simpson and I work at Google in London. I am the creator of <a href="http://dotastronomy.com">.Astronomy</a>. I am astrophysicist formerly of the <a href="http://zooniverse.org">Zooniverse</a> at the University of Oxford.